Rejected! X-Men Evolution Toys You Never Saw

Like the previous entry on the BK Lord of the Rings figures, these were pitched to Burger King in 2001 as a tie-in to the then-airing X-Men Evolution cartoon.

The earlier idea of figure packs was such a hit internally, when the X-Men license rolled around it was thought that the perfect “never been done before” concept would be 14 two-packs(!), each containing hero and villain figures. This is the overall “beauty shot” of all the figures together – each figure would have it’s own unique action feature and the pairs would be somewhat appropriate to the characters, i.e. Professor X & Magneto, Wolverine & Sabretooth, etc.

Sadly, the powers that be at Burger King didn’t see the fun in making the “same old figure toys” and instead opted for a rival concept of static figurines that came with an interactive CD. This is something I would see over and over while designing toys; people who didn’t like toys making decisions regardless of kids or collectors or even sales. While Jack in the Box later made a nice set of Justice League figures, this would have been a nice chance to own a lot of the more obscure characters that never saw toy representation.

One note: some of the designs (Boom Boom, Wolfsbane, etc) were based off the comics and not the show due to only a list of names for the upcoming characters was provided to BK and not character art. These would have been corrected had the concept made it to production. Much of the art shown is the work of the great Jeff Parker, Michael Smith, and David Hudnut! For more unseen X-Men Evolution art, go check out designer Steve Gordon’s great website!

With 20 years of digital marketing, film development and web design experience, Texas-based webmaster and noted toy historian Jason Geyer oversees digital creative services for a retail marketing agency in his daily life.
A former toy designer, Jason has been part of the online pop culture world for over 20 years, having founded some of the very first toy sites on the web including Raving Toy Maniac, ToyOtter, and Action Figure Insider. Along the way he helped pioneer online coverage of industry events such as San Diego Comic Con, E3, Toy Fair, and CES.

2 comments

Wow – I never thought there could have been so many. I have the X-Men Evo figures from Toybiz as well as the fast food premiums w/ the mini discs. I would have loved to get hold of all these, had they been produced.

Were any prototypes made? Or the concept was shot down before it got to that?

Thanks again, Jason, for always giving us these “blasts from the past” articles. I still refer to a lot of your archives (like the old Iron Man figures) for backtracking stuff I still don’t have.